Matter & Energy

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IT’SELECTRIC A new type of energy source made with hydrogel disks (shown) works a lot like the power-producing organs inside electric eels.

Thomas Schroeder and Anirvan Guha

CRASH AND WAVE In a galaxy 130 million light-years away, two neutron stars collided. This year, in the first detection of its kind, observatories caught the resulting gravitational waves and light show (illustrated).

NSF, LIGO, Sonoma State Univ., A. Simonnet

SPACING OUT Quantum communication through space is possible thanks to a Chinese satellite that beams particles of light down to telescopes like this one in Xinglong, China (shown here tracking the satellite’s location with a laser).